Tag Archives: usa today

After a long, fierce and competitive battle of the spring training ballparks, the results are in and it’s official.

Goodyear Ballpark – the spring training home of Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds and Cleveland Indians, has been voted as best place to see a spring training game in the Cactus League in USA Today’s 10Best Reader’s Choice Travel Poll.

Overall, Goodyear Ballpark – the crown jewel of the city which has been gaining notice on a national level also finished second nationally among Arizona and Florida spring training ballparks in the poll spearheaded by the newspaper’s longtime baseball writers Bob Nightengale and Paul White.

Goodyear Ballpark, which was completed in 2009 and seats 10,311, also recently was named the top “must see” spring training facility by National Public Radio’s Pittsburgh station’s travel reporter Elaine Labalme who traveled to spring training ballparks in both Arizona and Florida.

“This is quite an honor for Goodyear Ballpark,” Goodyear Mayor Georgia Lord said of USA Today’s 10Best poll. “We’re proud to be recognized as the No. 1 ballpark in the Cactus League, and thank the fans for voting us there.”

This year marked the first year of the Best Spring Training Facility category in USA Today’s 10Best Reader’s Choice Travel Poll, an annual contest in the largest newspaper in the United States. Readers and fans were allowed to vote once a day for a month – from Feb. 24 to March 24.

Goodyear was edged out by Charlotte Sports Park in Port Charlotte, Fla. – the spring training home of the Tampa Bay Rays. Salt River Fields, the spring training home of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies located on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian community, finished third.

“They told us we ran a great campaign,” said Debbie Diveney, business-operations supervisor of Goodyear Ballpark. “We tried to have fun with it – we even had fans voting live with us at the games – beginning with Goodyear Mayor Georgia Lord’s urging the fans to vote during our opening weekend festivities on Feb. 28 – right up to the very end. It was a valiant effort on our part. Thanks to all the fans who participated. Wait ‘til next year.”

One of the top business schools in the nation will have a new dean at the helm, starting tomorrow. Current Executive Dean Amy Hillman — a world-renowned management expert, popular teacher and noted researcher — will take over as dean of the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, effective March 1.

Hillman is the first-ever female dean of the school, which has undergraduate, full-time MBA, part-time MBA and online MBA programs all ranked Top 30 in the country by U.S. News & World Report. She is outlining a clear vision for the future.

“We’re going to keep advancing what we do to help our students achieve career and life successes,” says Hillman, who has played a key role in the growth of the school in her four years as second-in-command/executive dean. “Our world-class faculty is full of researchers who teach cutting-edge skills. We want to use this knowledge and our excellent position in a major metropolitan area (the Phoenix area) to help support the business world. We plan to broaden and deepen our business partnerships to become a ‘go-to’ place for firms to come to advance their work force and get help with real-life projects. We’re also going to focus on providing even more value and connections throughout the world for our vast 80,000-plus alumni network.”

Hillman never had dreams of academia when she was younger. She actually got her MBA on evenings and weekends, while striving to improve as general manager of a small retail and manufacturing business. However, several of her professors had such a profound influence on her that she realized she’d rather teach others about business than stay in her current job.

“As both an undergraduate and graduate student, I had individual faculty members who had a huge influence on my life,” says Hillman, who has been recognized with outstanding teaching awards every place she has worked. “I felt a sense that if I could make a difference for one student, like these faculty members did for me, then I would personally feel more accomplished than I did in the corporate world.”

Hillman has already made a clear mark on the W. P. Carey School in her decade-plus on the faculty as a management professor. She has championed entrepreneurship projects through the Spirit of Enterprise Center and helped to expand the school’s degree offerings to allow access to more students. (The school’s current total is more than 10,000 students). Recently, she was instrumental in the school introducing several new specialized master’s degrees to help undergraduates from other fields combine their passions with a solid business foundation. These include nine-month master’s programs in management and business analytics.

“I love ASU, and this opportunity to be a leader here, at a place that I love, is a real privilege,” says Hillman. “This is especially significant, since this year is the 10th anniversary of the gift from businessman/philanthropist Wm. Polk Carey that gave the school its name. We’ve come so far, thanks to this transformative gift, and we plan to go even further over the next 10 years.”

Hillman will preside over the opening of the new 129,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art McCord Hall this summer. The building will complement the two existing business-school structures, providing more classrooms for graduate and undergraduate honors students, technologically advanced team study rooms, a new career center, world-class conference facilities and outdoor assembly areas.

“This is a chance for us to really advance the science and culture of learning business,” says Hillman. “The way the building is set up, it will actually help our students to develop teamwork, communication and critical thinking skills.”

Hillman is also a strong supporter of the school’s research efforts. She is a renowned researcher in management, focusing on boards of directors, corporate political strategies, and how links between firms and their external contingencies improve financial performance. Her work has been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post and U.S. News & World Report, among other venues. The journal Technovation recently ranked the W. P. Carey School No. 1 among all business schools worldwide for authoring research in the Top 45 academic business journals with the most global impact.

“What makes this school special, though, is the people,” says Hillman. “The faculty, staff and students are so amazing, supportive and encouraging of each other. At some older, established schools, there is a sense of complacency. The W. P. Carey School is like a nimble entrepreneur, seeking to constantly improve. That feeling permeates our culture, helping us to transform and advance lives, the school and the business world.”

Hillman takes over for current dean, Robert Mittelstaedt, who is semi-retiring after 40 years in academia, including various leadership positions at the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an experienced business co-founder, a board member of three public companies and author of two business books. He will continue to serve at ASU as an adviser to the president and provost, as well as work on a project focused on the business and technical issues facing electric utilities in the future.

For more information about the W. P. Carey School of Business and its programs, visit www.wpcarey.asu.edu.

Clinical Research Advantage (CRA) received top honors in this year’s Best in Biz Awards, the only independent business awards program judged by members of the press and industry analysts. CRA received the Gold Award for Business Development Department of the Year.

Casey Orvin, Vice President of Business Development, and Amanda Drake, Director of Business Development, were recognized for their achievements in helping the company grow to become the largest and most therapeutically diverse integrated site network in the clinical trials industry.

“Casey Orvin and Amanda Drake have been vital to CRA’s substantial growth over the past couple of years,” said Mark S. Hanley, the company’s Chief Executive Officer. “Through their efforts, the number of clinical trials conducted by CRA increased by nearly 150%, and it continues to grow at an unprecedented rate.”

More than 400 entries were received in this year’s awards program, from a wide array of public and private companies of all sizes and from a variety of industries and regions in the U.S. and Canada.

Winner: KPNX-TV, Channel 12

12 News is Arizona’s leading source for local news on television, online with top-viewed website azcentral.com, and on-the-go with text and video available on mobile devices. With the combined resources of NBC News, The Arizona Republic and USA Today, 12 News is consistently the first choice for information whenever a major story breaks. 12 News is one of the top-performing NBC affiliates in the country, with ratings that frequently exceed the network’s national average. With a long history as the leader in innovation, 12 News was the first to deliver a local newscast in high-definition. Whenever and wherever consumers want quality news and information, 12 News is positioned to meet their needs.

Finalist: News Talk 92.3 KTAR

What started as one radio station 88 years ago has now evolved into one of the state’s leading media companies, delivering content to not only radios, but also cell phones and Internet browsers. KTAR’s news team is one of the largest in the state and is the winner of the coveted Edward R. Murrow Award for journalistic excellence. In the world of sports, KTAR is the play-by-play home of the state’s most popular teams. And, when it comes to on-air personalities, KTAR is the place to interact with the biggest names in news and sports talk. Also, its commitment to the community has generated more than $3 million in listener donations to Phoenix Children’s Hospital and the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center.

Finalist: The Lavidge Company

Lavidge Interactive’s roster of clients includes Massage Envy, LifeLock and Phoenix International Raceway, just to name a few. This specialized division is made up of creative strategists, marketers, software engineers and developers. Together, they work to create websites, online marketing campaigns, mobile apps, digital assets, social media strategies and more — transforming businesses that merely exist on the Web to Digital Magnets that profit on it. Also known as Internet Marketing Agency, Lavidge Interactive is a division of The Lavidge Company, an independently owned full-service advertising, interactive and public relations agency serving local, regional and national clients since 1982.

After more than 30 years as a sportswriter and sports editor at USA Today, the Kansas City Star (Editor-in-Chief’s note: Where he modestly won’t tell you he was part of a newspaper staff that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982), the Tucson Citizen and the Arizona Republic, I have turned in my cleats for wingtips as new associate editor for AZRE.

It’s been quite a learning curve, but those I’ve met so far have made me feel like part of the team. That includes my co-workers at AZ Big Media, and the brokers, contractors and marketing folks at some of the commercial real estate-related firms in Phoenix and Tucson.

I look forward to meeting even more of you. Please feel free to share your suggestions, story ideas and concerns; or if you just want to invite me to a Diamondbacks game (I promise I won’t bore you with locker room tales or drop names — I did interview O.J. Simpson before his run-in with the law) please call or send an e-mail.

I guess you can make the analogy that commercial real estate is a lot like sports. There are ups and downs. Highs and lows. Times to celebrate a victory and times to reflect on a loss. In the end, though, it’s all about the people with whom you work.